The Ultimate Blog Startup Checklist

I recently had a chance to setup a new blog. While that part was nothing out of the usual, this time I documented each and everything I setup to prepare the blog for launch. While some things are pretty obvious, others can only be pointed out if you have experience setting up a blog. Further, there are yet others which you realize over time as you post on the blog and build up your visitor base. Here’s the ultimate blog start-up checklist. This is all you’d need to check off to launch a blog.

Domain

This is going to be the url of your blog. Keep it short and sweet so that people can remember it and find it easy to locate your url and blog again. Also see my other post on selecting the domain and site name.

Webhosting

Most of the time, there are good chances that your domain provider will also provide you webhosting service. In fact if you choose webhosting you may even get a domain free on most of the service providers. Choose carefully and look for tech support and features.

CMS

While WordPress remains at the top in most polls, I set this one on drupal since it can handle multiple sites, blogs and I can use the same installation with common plugins/modules and themes. Also it allows one to harness the power of inline PHP and javascript. So if you are into it, go for WordPress if you want ease of use or Drupal if you are going to run applications, games, provide online services etc. along with the blog.

A theme or custom design

While there’s nothing quite like a custom designed theme for your site, all it takes is a few lines of coding and configuration to personalize your blog out of a ready made theme. The point is to give your blog a look that will establish it’s identity.

Logo

Again, logo is a part of branding. Look for something unique that you and your readers can relate to.

Favicon

This is the small icon that shows in the tab of tab enabled browsers like Firefox. Not an essential but your branding is incomplete without one.

Big RSS icon in the sidebar

A big RSS icon can help you grow your readership and subscriber base exponentially. If you want you may even want to couple it up with a subscriber count. New visitors will want to subscribe knowing that they are not alone to be subscribing.

Tagline

Pack a punch into this. Visitors should be able to relate to it and the topic of the site.

An About Page

What is your site about? Most of the wiser visitors head on right to this page before they subscribe or bookmark the site. Many a times it will even help you recall your original goal and keep distractions away in case you wander off topic.

A Sitemap

This is a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tweak which will help search engines index you site in its entirety and help bring in lot of traffic while enabling visitors to dig up your content indepth.

A Search box

This comes in handy when loyal visitors come back trying to locate a particular post or an item of interest. A must.

Google Analytics

Of course you want to know and analyse the traffic and understand your audience to strike a chord.

Plugins and configuration

You will, in almost all circumstances require to extend your blog with the use of plugins. For example, while my blog is still being prepared for launch, I use the Pong plugin to place the pong game on the homepage. My visitors can kill some time playing Pong while they are there.

Feedburner integration

A must. Feedburner is a comprehensive set of tools to manage your feed rather than just being a feed serving service. It’s been bought over by Google and in you may even want to advertise in your feed using it.

Advertisements

At the worst this will pay your webhosting bills. At the best… you’d become Darren Rowse.

Footer copyright notice, information

Some basic information about the site owner, contact info, copyright notice, etc. are best placed in the footer.

At least 5 top notch posts

Once you have these you can proudly launch the blog to have visitors come in and find useful stuff to become fans of yours and come back again to read further or subscribe. You don’t want to turn them off with a single welcome post to a blog in infancy.

Social-Media

Some Digg and social media buttons of your favorite social-media sites. You do want to share (and let others share) your posts with the community.

Google Webmaster Tools

Time to log into the Google Webmaster Tools Console and submit your sitemap, tune the indexing frequency and stuff. Monitor your webmaster settings and notices consistently to run a good blog.

This is the one you’ll help me with since I’m still wondering if I’m done yet. Did I miss anything? Your call, leave a comment.

18 Comments

I’ve come across your writing a few times now, since finding colorful tabs (which I love by the way.. thanks!) You are an interesting writer. This is a good article – I picked up some good tips – thanks again! BTW there is a typo in the last paragraph – “Diss I miss” instead of “Did I miss” – so I thought I’d let you know you missed that!

There are a few comments which mean more than the rest put together and yours is just one. Not being a native English speaker, I’m still getting used to expressing in English for an international audience. Your praise and appreciation for my writing inspires me and I cherish the memories of visitors who find my writing useful.

Thanks for pointing out the typo, I’ve corrected it. Again, thanks for using ColorfulTabs and do visit us again.

I am in the process of putting together a blog (or two!), and I have found your tips and compilations very instructive. Your writing is clear and to the point … you had me hooked and I went looking for more to read! It is not only interesting, but informative. Even though many of the concepts you write about are familiar to me as a writer and former teacher, I still found it interesting and a good review of what I know, as well as new stuff! As a former teacher whose students also included those who used English as a second language, I must say you have a very good grasp of using English in a more technical aspect.

Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and experience … it is very much appreciated and will be well-used.

Hi Jo,
Thanks for the appreciation. I’ve certainly learnt a lot since the time I started blogging. Everyday I learn new things while researching on the subjects and composing the posts. And it only gets better.

I’m glad you find my articles useful and the writing interesting and informative. It is my constant endeavor to keep up and enhance the utility of this blog and improve the visitors’ experience. Please keep the feedback flowing. It works wonders – for everyone.

I think #4 is the big one I noticed the most change with: “A theme or custom design” – most of the stuff that is standard and free out there doesn’t scream SUCCESS like a custom blog does. It shows you’re serious about what you’re doing and you want to give something other than the standard ho-hum…

I originally had my comments ‘moderated as I was afraid of spam and personal attacks. I found that I got few comments. I think people like to see what they have written immediately, not wait for approval. Any comments on this?

I am using Qickcast by GoDaddy and I found that it did not work well with IE. I changed to Firefox and it works much better. But now I find that when I embed a video I cannot see it in my posting software. It will be there when I publish (on either IE or FF), but the video does not show in the Quickcast blogging interface.

Great article, thanks for sharing your tips! I recently also included some ads on my relatively new blog but I’m still not sure if it was a good idea. Perhaps it is better to wait till your blog has a large number of visitors and not to scare away those few visitors I have now?

That’s a nice checklist.But I think that choosing a short but relevant domain name is a very difficult task because most of the domains are already taken by some one else.For Beginners,having good content on your blog is most important.The rest can be slowly and steadily integrated once your blog has readers.